


the ghost showed up in the polaroid

by Vacant_Ghostgirl



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brainwashing, Dissociation, Identity Issues, M/M, Memory Loss, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:37:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1693541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vacant_Ghostgirl/pseuds/Vacant_Ghostgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You crawl out of the Potomac in pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ghost showed up in the polaroid

The building is collapsing, and you are frozen.

Here is what you remember:

A metallic cold that plunged deep into the marrow of your bones. Eyes staring at you from the dark. A frigid winter. Limbs that don't belong to you. Limbs that do. A smile, someone was smiling. A bullet blossoms red to the back of someone laughing. It isn't you. It is not- there is no-

Chairs charged electric. A head splitting open. Sitting in the back of a canvas-covered truck. Handlers holding guns. A man tells a joke. He says, "Почему сын лорда не родился в России? Потому что там не 3 мудрецы или девственница оставил там!" None of the other men respond. Separate from that, you do not respond either.

The building is collapsing, and you are running down the stairs. (A boy in an alley with a black eye. He smiles up at you, but there is blood seeping out from his gums. "I like running down the stairs," he says. "It's something that feels- natural. Correct. Bucky?")

You're not running. You're sprinting. You are frozen, all at once. 

Red. A red room. Red blood. Your blood? Does this belong to you, all of it? It seeps through your fingers like a promise. The star on cold metal. Your abdomen is screaming, a malfunction different from the machinery of the weapon. It's a dream. It's a dream. 

Rafters and debris crash down around you. The stairs do not end. Outside, always, the cold winter wind howls achingly. There is a gun in your hands. There is a boy in your arms. There is nothing at all. The collapse is deafening, a roar like an explosion from above you. The walls shake and fall inwards, dust fills the bitter, cold air, it is getting closer to your back but you do not turn around, the building is falling, you cannot escape, the blood seeps through your fingers, this is desperation, and-

You-

You are-

You wake up. 

 

 

It is 7:00 am. This is the time you open your eyes, each morning. In a bed. You haven't checked yet, but you know that Steve is waiting outside of the door. He is holding his breath. This isn't something you have observed. It's intuitive. Brightness would shine through the window, the sun of Brooklyn basking the sheets in warm light, but the curtains are always drawn. When you walk into the kitchen, Steve stands at the table pretending that he hadn't been wavering at the threshold of the room a few moments ago.

"Sleep well?" 

You don't respond.

He says you have an 'internal clock'. It sounds correct. A clock somewhere inside you, ticking. You are a time bomb. An IED. (Side of the road in Sudan, you'd been watching the car go towards the objective point through the scope of a rifle, wait to confirm-)

Gears shifting somewhere in your gut. An internal clock. Improvised Explosive Device. Hear it ticking. You tell this to Steve. His expression is something you are unable to identify. He gives you a long look.

An internal clock.

You go back to bed. 

 

 

They- did not come to collect you, in the end. Captain America came to collect you. There was a museum, and then the roof of a concrete building, and then nothing. You woke up to the sun too bright in your eyes and the strong grip of another person up against your chest like a vice. 

They put you in a hospital room, and you destroyed it.

"I don't want them to to sedate him," You remember him (Steve Rogers)(Failed Mission) saying outside of the door, after you had thrown the IV pole through the glass and kicked the stand next to the cot over the table (also destroyed). You'd sat on the floor in the middle of the broken glass and curled all the way into yourself. The weapon hung at your side like a reminder. Close your eyes. Ball your hands into fists. You were waiting for the cold. You were waiting.

"It's not going to help him- he needs the chance to-"

"Steve." A woman's voice. Red hair, jumping down from a car. You clutch your head in your hands. "There's nothing we can- he's going to hurt himself. We'll figure something else out later, but right now, it's the only thing we can do. He just needs- time-"

Glass in bloody palms. Blood through sticky fingers.

They placed you in a different room. This one, you didn't destroy. 

 

 

Another dream: Captain America shoots you in your right leg. Your lower back. Your stomach. You fall into a river. No one saves you.

 

 

It is 7:00 am. 

Out of the cold, time passes painfully slow. You wake up and it is exactly one day after you last laid down to sleep, every day. You can't let go of the waiting. Metal clamps around your wrists. You grit your teeth. After you left the hospital, Steve took you to up New York. You were transferred in a car, instead of a truck. The entire ride across the Brooklyn bridge, you didn't stop looking at him.

"We left the hospital because I was deemed a non-threat," You say. It's a inquiry for confirmation. Low voice. Tense shoulders. You can't get used to speaking when you aren't asked to. You're sitting in the front seat. Steve flicks his eyes over to yours for a moment before going back to the road. He has been doing this for the past 45 minutes.

"Sort of," He answers hesitantly. The weapon is heavy at your side. For some reason, you don't feel as if you need to tell Steve that their judgements are wrong. You are efficient, but you are not sent to fight losing battles. The car is silent, for a while. You want to ask another question, but one has already been a risk. Apprehension churns in your stomach. Steve tilts his head towards you.

"You know where we're going?" He asks. The road stretches out in front of the two of you together. A moment passes, and something in your head opens up for a second. Something that's been on the tip of your tongue for 70 years. This is the first thing you remember, after the hospital. This is the only thing you remember about the boy in the back alley for 3 months. The word comes out of your mouth like you've been waiting to speak, and you hold to it like a rosary.

"будущее," You say hoarsely. Words without thought. Muscle memory from memories that aren't yours. Steve gives you a pained look, and then turns back to the road. He doesn't understand, and you don't think it's a good idea to tell him.

 

 

In Brooklyn, you sleep like the dead. Summer passes and you curl yourself into a sinking bed. The air conditioning unit drones on in the dry heat, and you watch the ceiling fan go round for hours. Steve leans in the doorway. He does this often: stares at you like you could save someone. Looks at your arm. Creaking from disuse. White walls. White sheets, like snow. You shudder. The curtains are drawn. You have been sleeping for years, but, you are so, so tired. 

Steve brings you food. Brings you books. Something begins to break down in your head (You have not been deconstructed frozen wiped electricity buzzing like fire behind your eyes in the echoes of your head in 34 days there is no mission there is no death there is only the summer in Brooklyn and you are) and you are-

Hollow. You collapse inwards. You are The Winter Soldier, Красная комната гордость. The cold did not come. It didn't. 

This is the compromised weapon of a crumbling sect with the ghost of a good man across your features. 

You sleep.

 

 

In August, Steve lies down on the bed next to you, very careful not to come too close. Tiptoeing around a land mine. Every muscle tenses, but you don't turn to face him. You have not had your back to someone you could not see (weaponless) in a very long time. Something else: your hands disassembling a gun in Wales. Someone screaming in Polish. Squeeze your eyes shut tightly. For a while, you allow the stillness. The fan humming in the window. Cars passing outside. Heat hangs in the air. Stifling.

"This," You say finally, and your voice is rough from disuse. You continue. "This is not… how you wanted this to go." It's an observation that's painful to verbalize. Disappointing. You can feel his eyes on your back, and it makes you fidget for reasons you (can't remember) aren't sure of.

"No," He replies. He must see your shoulders go up, because he rushes to finish the thought. "No, I meant- Bucky," He says. You flinch. "Being here with you- after everything. Getting you back… this is… more than I could have asked for." He takes a long, drawn out breath. "It's more than I deserve. I'm happy to be with any part of you." He pauses. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet. " _Every_ part."

New York buzzes outside, but the air in the apartment has stilled. When you clench your hands, the metal of the weapon clinks against your palm to your fingers.

"Steve," You say with conviction in the dark, "I hurt a lot of people."

"That wasn't you," He says fiercely. The bed creaks when he pushes himself up. "That wasn't you, Bucky, that was- they put something else in your head, you hear me? And- if that's what this is about-" This. Lying in bed like it is a coffin, day after day, time passing in the odd way that is exactly the way it should- "then you should know that you don't deserve it. You don't have to- punish yourself. I'll stay with you. I will always-" _(I'mwithyoutiltheendoftheline)_ "- but you need to know that no one blames you. I'm just… I'm asking you to try. I'm just asking."

Your eyes are wide. The room is deathly quiet. Neither of you speak.

"I'm sorry," Steve murmurs. "That was… Sorry. It's late." The bed shifts, and his weight disappears from beside you. Footsteps on a hard wood floor.

_I'll stay with you- I will always- I'll stay with you- I will always-_

Something fierce and foreign lights up in your gut, and- you can't stand it- you jolt up and reach out, grasping for him in the dark, panicked. When your hand (flesh and blood, the contact makes you freeze up but you barrel through the pit in your stomach-) finds his arm, he stops and turns back, expression shocked. Your grip tightens.

"Don't," You say thickly, "Go." 

The moment is long. Steve stands before you with wide eyes, down at your hand and then back up to you. The hope in his gaze is destroying you, but- _( I'll stay with you- I will always-)_

"Okay," He whispers. Takes a step back towards the bed. "Okay."

Okay. 

 

They had thought you were going to be dangerous, after HYDRA collapsed. You hadn't understood. You think they do now, though. A gun isn't dangerous when no one's finger is over the trigger. 

 

 

In September, you get out of bed.

Steve calls them 'the good days'. He cooks in the apartment and you sit at the counter, hands clenching and unclenching, breathing like you'd been told to when it felt like your lungs were collapsing. You close your eyes and the smell of butter sizzling in a pan drifts through the kitchen. You eat anything Steve makes, something that had at first made him happy, and then sad, he had asked you, 'What do you like to eat?' and there was nothing. You had said, 'It doesn't matter'. You remember: thick, colorless protein matter from jars. An IV into your arm. Steve makes you food, now, though, and you- you like it. 

"Did you use to cook?" You remember asking quietly after dinner once. He had stopped scrubbing the dish in his hands, turned back to you with a look of all the broken hope you had brought into his apartment. He doesn't need to ask. He knows what you mean. Before. With him. The man who died on the train.

"Yeah," He murmured, and smiled, but it was- not. "You'd- burn water, if you could. Wouldn't let you near the kitchen," He'd chuckled. You'd looked away. After a moment, he'd gone back to the dishes.

Not a good day. The days you try to remember- not always good.

You wake up, and Steve asks, "Do you want to watch TV, or go out to get groceries?" 

He does not say, 'What do you want to do?' 

You both know what he is really asking. Leave the apartment or stay. You feel useless this way, but, you are also almost thankful Steve doesn't give you all of the choice. It takes you a few moments to decide. It is something you are learning.

"Out," You say, and you can see the start of a small smile on his lips. 

Brooklyn is not what you had forgotten, but in a way, being out is almost easier than being alone with Steve in the flat. The two of you stand on the curb, waiting for the light to turn, and the buildings cast shadows over the streets. It's warm for a day in fall. You are not sure how you know this. The first few times you had walked down the block with Steve, you had to sit on the curb after the first ten minutes, and hold your head in your hands, and you had done what people had told you to do, you counted down from ten to zero, very, very slowly. Your head felt like it was going to crack open. You could not turn it off, you had seen fifty six different potential threats from when you exited the building and your fingers would not stop twitching, you bit your lip until you drew blood and the taste of it was achingly familiar. 

You think, Brooklyn has adapted in a way that you cannot.

Steve takes your arm ( _your_ arm, the weapon hangs at your other side, reminder) and squeezes it. 

"Hey," He says, and it's quiet, but even on the commotion of the busy street, you can hear him say, "Breathe. It's okay. We're only a few blocks away."

You cross the street together. 

 

будущее. будущее. This is it. The place you were going. It's this.

 

In October, the nightmares are worse.

The Winter Soldier's grip on your sleep is hard to shake. You dream about blood, a woman screaming, there are gunshots and the creeping cold, and you come to hate the way you jolt awake, dripping in sweat with russian commands on your lips, you could remember the way the weight of the rifle in your hands, someone's esophagus crushes under your grip-

The weapon bridges the gap from the dreams to the waking world. It is the constant. No matter where you are, dream or not, it hangs at your side like a weight that cannot be forgotten. You are the same- asset. You do not belong to you. This arm is not yours. This weapon is a commodity. Steve calls this line of thinking, 'regression'. When you do it out loud, he shakes.

In October, you dream about the last mission you were given. When you wake yelling, he rushes in, bags under his eyes like he has been listening to you thrash about for hours.

"Get it off!" You'd screamed, clawing at the place on your shoulder where metal merged with muscle and scar tissue. Steve had looked mildly terrified, but what's even worse, the remorse and the pity that seeped into his expression like a trademark. 

"Buck- it's okay, you're safe-" He tried to reason, kneeling on to the bed, but you're not having it. The dream is fresh in your mind and you can see- the flash between reality and the nightmare, Steve's face in front of yours, the weapon closed around his throat, blood leaking from his lips, he'd been begging- Как вы думаете, выпрашивая вашей жизни будет иметь значение?- 

"No! нет!! I want it off, please, get it away," You'd begged. You want. You want something. It feels like a weight in your gut. "Steve, Steve- please, I can't-"

"I want to help you, I just need you to-"

"получить его от меня," You'd sobbed, and Steve looked like he might break.

"Bucky," He says, voice thick, and your kneels curls up to your chest, the weapon hanging like dead weight at your side, palm face up and fingers splayed. The room goes quiet. Your eyes adjust to the dark. Your breath evens out. Silence, just like you'd prayed for.

 

One time, when you are out in the park, a woman stops Steve on the street. She is crying. She holds out her hands and he takes them, and she says things about her daughter, and a day in Manhattan, and she says, 'Thank you, thank you'. Steve looks like he is in pain. It sets you on edge. When she leaves, Steve stands on the street for a little while. You stand next to him, and you think it has been this way for a long time.

 

A night in late October, you go out alone. It is dark and you unlock every latch on the door. Steve is asleep in the other room, but you know that soon he will get up to check on you. You think: Steve has an internal clock, as well, now. It is centered around your disasters.

You walk up the stairs of the apartment building in bare feet, cold concrete sending shivers up your spine, and push the door open to the roof. Unusual. Before, you would have taken every step to avoid this. Roofs of buildings. You always end up here. But, your hands don't shake. The sky is glowing from light pollution, and the chill of autumn wraps up around you. You are not nervous. (Steve calls this line of thinking, 'progress').

You tilt your head up, and you breathe, and you hold the air in your lungs until it hurts. Brooklyn sings with ambient noise like a dull hum. 

Floors below, Steve is asleep in the apartment. In a few minutes, you will go back down the stairwell, and your feet will be cold, and the air from the roof will still be in your lungs, and you will open the door. You will turn all the latches back. You will go through the front hall, and then the kitchen, and then into the bed. You will breathe out. In the morning, Steve will say, Bucky how did you sleep? He will pretend he does not know. You will say, Steve.

Steve.

I think I remember something.

**Author's Note:**

> There was no outside editing for this chapter so any mistakes are purely my fault.  
> You can come say hello to me on my [tumblr](http://www.nancydrewofficial.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Russian Translations
> 
> 'будущее' - 'The Future'
> 
> 'Красная комната гордость'- 'Pride of the Red Room'
> 
> 'Как вы думаете, выпрашивая вашей жизни будет иметь значение?- американская мразь-' - 'Do you think begging for your life will mean anything?' 
> 
> 'нет' - 'No'
> 
> 'получить его от меня' - 'Get it off of me'


End file.
